Over the years, manufacturers and retailers have used many methods to entice consumers to purchase products offered in the market. One such method involves the art of using premiums.
Premiums offer the consumer the opportunity to receive materials of value generally associated with the purchase of a product. Typically, the materials of value include coupons, sweepstakes, mail-in rebates or other items such as inexpensive toys. The materials of value are often concealed from the immediate sight of the consumer as part of the lure to get the consumer to purchase the product. For instance, it is known in the art that cereal manufacturers will hide inexpensive toys or games inside a box of cereal as a means to encourage young children to choose a particular brand of cereal over another. Usually associated with the inexpensive toys or games hidden in the box of cereal is some form of printed advertisement to alert the young children or the adult that a material of value is contained inside and available after the point of purchase.
Premiums have become well known in the art as "incentives" to induce sales. Recently, premiums have taken on different forms from the traditional coupons, sweepstakes, or mail-in rebates. Today, telephone calling cards, debit cards, and now smart cards are available as premiums that offer free telephone use or credit as a material of value to entice consumers (i.e., normally more mature purchasers), to buy a product. More and more, these new forms of premiums are being offered by manufacturers and retailers as incentives to increase the sale of products.
The delivery of the premiums to the consumers is also an art. Packaging labels to deliver premiums to consumers in order to generate sales is a practice frequently used by many manufacturers and retailers. Typically, premiums such as coupons, mail-in rebates, sweepstakes entry forms, product literature, or related product information have been delivered to consumers in multi-panel labels or expanded content labels affixed to a container. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,250,385, 3,436,854, 3,525,470, 3,943,645, and 4,103,821 disclose examples of such labels. Collectively, these patents disclose the use of an adhesive envelope or package to affix to a container and having a transparent cover sheet for containing, mounting, and protecting display material such as advertising sheets, packaging slips, advertising posters, and data cards.
As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,504 shows a label assembly for affixing to a container or package that includes concealed promotional material. The label assembly includes a backing strip, a coating of release material on the backing strip, at least one base label bearing advertising printed material mounted on the backing strip, a coating of adhesive on the outer surface of the base label, and an outer label to secure to the base label. The promotional material may be disposed between the base label and the outer label.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,676 shows a label, either of a round or rectangular configuration, to affix to a container having a base layer, a transparent cover sheet, and a folded indicia-bearing strip such as a coupon.
However, a problem associated with packaging labels as represented by the foregoing patents is that they may often obscure the product information portion (such as the product name, information disclosure labels, ingredient lists, and warning instructions) of the container or the container's original label on which they are affixed. Contributing to this problem are new government laws to protect consumers which require manufacturers and retailers to display additional information related to the product. The additional information disclosed to the consumers as required by the new government laws are not to be concealed or obscured both before and after the purchase of the product. Due to the combined demands of the manufacturer and retailer to display both the product information portion of the container and the information required by the government, the amount of space otherwise available to affix packaging labels that include premiums is reduced. This problem is particularly serious when the containers are small. As yet another problem, manufacturers and retailers use containers that are curved, thus making the art of attaching a packaging label even more difficult.
To be effective, packaging labels to attach to a container must be adaptable to the myriad of containers that are used by manufacturers and retailers in the market. Moreover, packaging labels must not conceal or obscure the underlying label or product information portion of the container both before and after the premium is removed. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a label that can deliver a premium to the consumer that includes the additional feature of being adaptable to different configurations of containers and avoids obscuring the label or product information associated with the container.
Generating sales of products by offering free premiums is not the only part of a manufacturer's and retailer's marketing efforts. Increasingly, manufacturers and retailers seek information regarding the purchasing decisions made by consumers. Typically, the purchase of products or services involves a decision by the particular consumer to choose a particular product offered by one manufacturer or retailer over another. The frequency with which a particular product is purchased by a consumer relates to the ultimate success or failure of the product in the market place. In order to better understand the purchasing decisions made by consumers, manufacturers and retailers increasingly seek to collect consumer related information about the products consumers buy and the reasons consumers like or dislike certain products. Manufacturers and retailers use the information as a way of improving marketing efforts, improving a product, developing new products, or determining the characteristics or profile of the typical consumer.
Manufacturers and retailers have increasingly used the consumer's point of purchase of a product as a means of obtaining consumer related data. Traditionally, manufacturers and retailers have used surveys as a method of collecting this information. In some cases, a survey is done by personally interviewing consumers about their purchases and preferences. This type of survey is usually done at a retail outlet or as the consumer is leaving the store. In order for the survey to be effective, the survey must be taken by experienced survey takers who are schooled in the art of asking questions and eliciting a response that will be beneficial to the manufacturer and retailer. Often, however, consumers have little interest in taking time out of shopping to answer a series of questions, particularly if there is no incentive or value to be derived from their participation. Thus, a problem associated with obtaining consumer related information from the consumer is actually enticing the consumer to voluntary participate in the survey.
To reduce costs and to encourage consumers to participate in surveys, manufacturers and retailers have used sweepstakes entry forms or rebate coupons to deliver surveys to consumers. This type of survey is less expensive than the ones which require personal interviews, but nevertheless has drawbacks. This type of survey is characterized by low participation. Even the responses that are mailed in may not be helpful to the manufacturer or retailer because the consumer may not have understood the questions or may have provided inaccurate responses. Thus, there is a need to elicit consumer information that is cost effective and will provide accurate information to the manufacturer and retailer.
One method of conducting surveys or collecting consumer related information to increase the reliability and usefulness of the response, in addition to cutting costs, is the telephone survey. Through this format, a person experienced in conducting surveys and recording information may ask a series of questions and immediately record the responses. Also, the telephone survey gives the interviewer the freedom to answer calls and conduct surveys for a much broader audience, more likely than not from around the country. The advantages associated with using the telephone survey is obvious. The costs of conducting the survey are reduced and the information recorded will be less susceptible to incorrect responses because professional persons will conduct the actual survey. Similar types of surveys can also be taken through the internet or other electronic means in which responses are recorded in computer readable form.
Nonetheless, the problem of how to get the consumer to participate in the telephone survey or to provide consumer related data remains. It continues to be desirable to deliver to the consumer a premium affixed to a container as a way of encouraging the consumer to participate in the survey. Thus, the ability to quickly and accurately obtain information from consumers regarding the purchase of a specific product is a challenge that remains in the art.
Accordingly, there continues to be a need for a system to deliver a packaging label and incentive that is adaptable to the myriad of configurations of the containers used by manufacturers and retailers. Also, there continues to be a need in the art for a packaging label containing an incentive or a premium that does not obscure the underlying display information section of the container. Further, there is a need for an incentive delivery system that both draws the consumer's attention to the incentive or premium within the packaging label while not explicitly revealing its presence in a retail store. Furthermore, there is a need for a packaging label which can deliver an incentive or premium to the consumer to elicit and require the consumer to participate in a survey in order to redeem the premium. The present invention fills those needs.